Customize Your Recipes With The Baker App

Most cooking apps for Android are rather straightforward, as cooking involves less time spent using the app and more time doing the actual task at hand. That’s pretty understandable, and as an occassional food maker, I have been content with whatever cooking app I had installed at the moment — until I came across The Baker App. This app not only got my attention, it also motivated me to venture into the exciting world of baking. It’s not every day that I get unusually excited about a cooking app, but The Baker App is obviously an exception.

Bake Beautifully

Baking is the pretty side of the culinary arts. Its focus on food appearance is just as important as its actual taste. So it should only make sense that an app for baking is presented in the same thoughtful manner. This is something that The Baker App has done quite well. With a beatiful interface, it makes browsing and editing recipes a lot more appealing.

Minimalist home screen with only 4 buttons

The main screen’s dual-toned design has four buttons: three for recipes and one for the app settings. The design is serenely minimalist, as there are not a lot of buttons within the app.

Bake as You Please

There are seven preloaded recipes with the app, and you have an option to edit them and save as your own version. The recipe list is listed in alphabetical order and can be accessed from the main screen by tapping My Recipes.

Built-in recipes to try

To view a recipe, tap the recipe name. A Customise button will appear on the top right corner for each recipe — click it if you want to revise its contents. You might notice that the recipe name has “My” as a prefix to the original recipe name as a way to indicate a customised entry.

A clean editing interface

Editing lines of text such as the recipe name, ingredients and ingredient volume are done right on the same page, without any other screens popping up. You can change the measurement units and ingredient icons from the drop down box that pops up. The recipe instructions are found under the Notes section, which can be viewed by tapping its edges.

Toggling between units of measurements

Bake Your Own Recipes

To add your own recipe, choose Add Recipe from the main screen. Type in the name of the recipe on the header, and start adding ingredients below. A drop down lets you choose from a list of common ingredients, but will accept any entry that’s not in the list. Add the ingredient volume and unit of measurement beside its name. The default unit of measurement is grams but you can change it to other options such as milliliters, ounces or cups. You can move an ingredient up or down the list, and delete ingredients by tapping and holding down the ingredient icon and swiping it to the right.

Adding recipes

The Add Section button provides a break between ingredient lists. This is mostly for recipes with elements such as fillings, frosting or dough.

Finally, you add the recipe instructions by tapping Notes on the bottom. You can type these manually or paste them from another source. When done, Save the recipe from the top right corner, and it will be added to the My Recipes section of the app.

Bake Accurately

This app uses a formula called The Baker’s Percentage where each ingredient is converted to a percentage of the entire mixture. This makes it easy to change recipe volumes accurately. The formula is:

ingredient’s percentage = ingredient mass ÷ flour mass × 100%

For instance, to get the percentage of cocoa powder in the Classic Chocolate Cake recipe, we do the following:

36.3 g ÷ 232.75 g × 100% = 15.50%

where: cocoa powder mass: 36.3 g; flour mass: 232.75 g

The good thing about this app is it automatically adjusts all ingredient volumes when you change anything in the recipe. Take the example below. To get half the yield of a recipe, I can divide the mixture volume into two and put the new value into the mixture field. All ingredient volumes are automatically adjusted to fit the new mixture volume.

Changing the mixture volumes adjusts all other ingredient volumes

Bake More

Recipe packs are available for purchase in the Play Store. You can access the list by choosing Buy Recipes from the app’s main screen. Each recipe pack is priced at AU$2.99 and includes recipes for bread, cakes, cupcakes and muffins. Choosing a recipe pack from the app will link you to the Play Store download page where you can buy it. If the recipes don’t show on the list after purchasing, go back to the Buy Recipes section and tap Restore unlocked recipe packs on the bottom of the page.

Recipe packs for sale

Unfortunately, there is no option yet to import recipes from popular cooking websites. This feature is present in most Android cooking apps, and hopefully this feature is in the works for this app.

Conclusion

The Baker App is hands down the most beautiful and efficient cooking app I have ever come across. The app is a great balance between great design and smart features. Its appeal lies in its simplicity for new bakers and its competency to impress tenured ones. It may not have all the tricks in the book, but it has the best and brightest ones.